The Toll Truth

Drivers would flock to I-205 to avoid paying tolls for the Columbia River Crossing.

Only about half as many cars would use the Columbia River
Crossing as Oregon officials have previously claimed, and far more
vehicles would choke the Interstate 205 Bridge as drivers dodged tolls
on the CRC, according to an analysis by Portland economist Joe
Cortright.

The news—reported
Monday on wweek.com—drills yet another hole in the underlying argument
for the $2.8 billion megaproject to bring light rail to Vancouver,
rebuild I-5’s spans across the Columbia River, and expand highway
interchanges in both Oregon and Washington.

Gov. John Kitzhaber
and other CRC backers have long claimed that the existing Interstate
Bridge can no longer meet the demands of commuters and truckers.

Analysis by their own
consultants calls into question how the state would cover the costs if
too few drivers paid the tolls to cross the bridge.

Records
released to Cortright in response to a public records request show
state officials have known for months about the new tolling numbers and
failed to share them with lawmakers and the public.

CRC officials have
shown a pattern of nondisclosure that’s starting to frustrate even
allies of the project, especially since Kitzhaber now claims Oregon can
build the bridge without money from Washington state—a stark reversal of
his position only a few months ago.

Kitzhaber is
preparing to ask legislators to extend the deadline for CRC funding in a
special session scheduled for Sept. 30. The project’s authorization
expires that same day.

State Rep. Julie
Parrish (R-West Linn) voted in favor of funding a bi-state CRC in
February. Now she says she’ll turn down an Oregon-only project should it
come up for a vote during the special session.

“I just don’t see how the governor has much credibility on this issue anymore,” Parrish says.

CRC officials have
hidden big problems with the project before, including the fact that the
I-5 spans were designed too low for a lot of Columbia River ship
traffic.

Cortright uncovered
projections by CDM Smith—the company the CRC hired to perform an
investment-grade analysis on tolling—that show the new Interstate Bridge
would see about 78,400 daily trips, far fewer than the more than
160,000 cars projected earlier.

The numbers, given as
estimated daily vehicle trips, also project I-205’s Glenn Jackson
Bridge would have to carry 2½ times as many cars as predicted earlier.

Cortright discovered the figures in a March 3, 2013, email from a CDM Smith employee to project officials.

Former state Rep.
Katie Eyre (R-Hillsboro)—who lost her seat in the House after mounting
outspoken opposition to the CRC—says that means Kitzhaber probably knew
about the numbers when he signed the bill March 12 committing Oregon to
$450 million in funding for the project.

“If it doesn’t hang with Kitzhaber,” says Eyre, a certified public accountant, “I don’t know where it hangs.”

“The governor
continues to work with the Legislature and treasurer to conduct a
thorough, timely and transparent review of replacing the Interstate 5
Bridge with an Oregon-led project that takes seriously our fiduciary
responsibility to Oregon taxpayers,” Kitzhaber spokesman Tim Raphael
tells WW by email. “That work is not yet complete, and no decision has been made about next steps.”

But critics say
Kitzhaber has long ignored a basic fact: Many drivers will avoid CRC
tolls by diverting their vehicles onto I-205.

“What the CDM Smith
study shows is perfectly in line with what you would expect,” says Clark
Williams-Derry, a project manager with the Sightline Institute, an
environmental think thank based in Seattle. “But we haven’t heard about
this stuff from anywhere inside the CRC; we don’t see it in the public
discussion. It’s the elephant in the room that no one is willing to talk
about.”

Williams-Derry—who
correctly predicted tolling and traffic shortfalls for similar
Seattle-area projects, including the Highway 520 bridge—says
megaprojects “develop their own internal logic.”

Their supporters too often ignore or squirrel away inconvenient facts, he adds, in the name of pushing a project forward.

“This is billions of
dollars they’re gambling with,” Williams-Derry says. “If you have such a
great project, why do you have to hide so much?”